When Kelli's not teaching (or live-tweeting The Walking Dead), she researches two rather disparate fields: Shakespeare in film and popular culture, and the star image and work of Hollywood song-and-dance man Gene Kelly.

An advocate of social media, Kelli is also interested in the integration of social (and new) media in and outside the classroom, teaching with Twitter and video essays in particular. Because of her expertise in this field, Kelli serves as a columnist for Chronicle Vitae, where she writes about how to incorporate technology into the traditional university classroom. Other teaching and research interests are the film musical, classical Hollywood cinema, American film and television comedy, “Baby Boomer movies," and stand-up comedy.

Kelli's writings have appeared in the popular press (AlterNet, Mental Floss, The Week), on scholarly sites (FlowTV, Vitae, JSTOR Daily, The Conversation), and in peer-reviewed academic journals (Literature/Film Quarterly, Journal of Film and Popular Culture). Her work has also been featured in pop-culture and humor encyclopedias, in single-issue magazines, on podcasts, at conferences, and on radio programs alongside Gene Kelly's daughter and Dancing with the Stars’ Len Goodman and Glee’s Michael Morrison. In 2012, Kelli published Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, which she co-edited with Gabrielle Malcolm.

Kelli received BA and MA degrees in English from the University of Louisiana-Monroe, and she earned the PhD in Humanities from the University of Texas-Dallas.

In her spare time, Kelli runs (slowly), renovates her 1924 Chicago bungalow, and curates Gene Kelly Fans. She also founded and edits The Outtake—the only Medium publication devoted to smart, accessible, and sometimes very personal writing on all aspects of film and television, classical and contemporary.